polyjitter

This is a pretty loaded statement, so let's break it down.

What does that mean?

Proprietary software limits access to those who need access to this software with highly restrictive licensing fees. They have usage terms that often deny access or platforms to those such as sex workers, people living under oppressive regimes, and those who otherwise systematically restricted by society.

It is created by companies who only have their own increasing capital in mind. FOSS software, meanwhile, can be sustainable while being worked on by a large amount of individuals and larger corporations, who find a middle ground between everyone's needs instead of min/maxxing profit.

Proprietary software is a privacy nightmare – privacy is not, as commonly believed, an alt-right talking point, as LGBT people and minorities have to consider it every day under the pressures of law enforcement and societal judgement.

It conveniently profits off of hate speech and fascist groups that use the platform. See Discord, Reddit, Youtube, and Twitter, etc. – all these platforms have turned a blind eye to money-making nationalist groups, until they absolutely could not anymore.

This is what I mean by proprietary software is fascism.

Of course, a piece of software here and there can do a net benefit while still not being FOSS. It's a little like the old “a good human can be a cop, but there can never be a good cop.” A single piece of proprietary software, like a website with a not completely fully FOSS stack like itch.io, can do a lot of good.

But as we can see, as a whole what is behind proprietary software does immense harm. It should be seen as a system that needs to be deconstructed and torn down as quickly as possible, before it's too late to reverse our technological direction.

Answering Rebuttals

If we didn't have closed source stuff we wouldn't have MacOS/iOS! These the best option for people who don't know much about computers, since they are easy to use but still made by a company that still cares somewhat about privacy.

Not a good thing. Software can be user-friendly regardless of licensing, but often isn't because FOSS developers are denied resources to improve these edges by proprietary developers.

Proprietary software generally gets faster bug and security fixes, unlike FOSS which only gets fixes when someone decides they want to fix it.

Not true. Because only a select amount of people are working on a proprietary stack, while the entire world is with FOSS software, patches can take months in proprietary software, while fixes for security issues are fixed within a day at most in FOSS projects. This has been proven time and time again. There's a reason businesses prefer Linux for servers.

FOSS doesn't provide a steady income for developers as, unlike working for a company/selling your software, people only pay sometimes.

For the most part this is true, but it doesn't make proprietary software better. This simply means that, while we still must deal with capitalism, we need to make the FOSS model more sustainable.

This has been getting better and better lately – Canonical, Red Hat, IBM, Purism, and System76 are all profitable and heavily contribute to open source efforts, without being parasites on the community.

So, what do we do next?

Center independent creators and developers. Sites like itch.io are a model for a sustainable entertainment platform, which don't focus large studios who exploit their workers.

Re-contextualize donations. Projects like elementary are doing really good work in providing ways to emphasize the need to give back, without forcing others to give if they can't.

Controversial, but don't pirate software unless you have to. Instead, try to seek out alternatives, and lead efforts to improve those alternatives.

Support sustainability and giving back in all areas of tech, and stop giving more and more to San Fran startups. Let's do more.